Sony, Nintendo Rise on Report China May End Game-Console Ban

A child takes a photograph of fishes in a water tank using a Nintendo Co. 3DS handheld game console outside the Sony Corp. showroom at the Ginza district of Tokyo. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Sony Corp. and Nintendo Co., Japan’s
biggest makers of gaming devices, rose after China Daily said
the world’s most-populous country may end a 12-year ban on the
sale of video-game consoles.

Sony, the maker of PlayStation machines, jumped 9.1 percent
in Tokyo trading to 1,407 yen, highest since April 2012.
Nintendo, the creator of Super Mario, added 3.4 percent to 9,630
yen, the highest since Dec. 7, in Osaka.

China banned the consoles in 2000 because of concerns about
the potential harm to the physical and mental development of
young people. The Ministry of Culture is now holding discussions
with other departments about potentially ending the ban, the
state-run China Daily newspaper reported today, citing a person
it didn’t identify.

“Investors are welcoming the report,” said Mitsuo
Shimizu, a Tokyo-based analyst at Iwai Cosmo Holdings Inc. “It
would open up a new and huge market for the video-game makers.”

Nintendo, Sony and other Japanese companies have also
benefited from the yen’s decline to the weakest in 2 1/2 years
against the dollar, Shimizu said. A weaker currency boosts the
repatriated value of Japanese exporters’ overseas earnings.

‘Promising Market’

The Chinese console ban was introduced by seven ministries
in 2000, and all of them would need to agree to end it, China
Daily said. A spokeswoman in the Ministry of Culture’s press
office said it couldn’t immediately comment. She declined to
give her name.

“Sony has always regarded China as a promising market for
the game operation and has been studying and preparing for
possible business opportunities,” Satoshi Fukuoka, a spokesman
for Sony’s game unit, said today by phone. Sony has been in
“constructive discussions” with regulators in China, he said,
declining to elaborate.

Yasuhiro Minagawa, a spokesman for Nintendo, declined to
comment. The Osaka-based company makes the Wii and Wii U
consoles.

Game consoles are available in China through black-market
retailers. Touchscreen computers and smartphones, such as Apple
Inc.’s iPad and iPhone, are available legally.

Sony also was raised to buy at Bank of America’s Merrill
Lynch because of the weaker yen and a turnaround in unprofitable
businesses. Analyst Eiichi Katayama increased the bank’s target
price to 1,850 yen from 980 yen.